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just got here this morning. I haven’t had time to exchange my money.”
    “I don’t know.…” The barman had an uneasy look, as if he thought I was pulling a fast one.
    “Oh come on, Bert,” one of the guys at the bar said. “Give the lad a break and take his money. He’s come all the way from America just today!”
    He smiled and winked at me, his grin showing gaps in his teeth. He wore blue coveralls, like I had seen on the workmen at the bombed-out building earlier that morning. His hands were rough and callused and his gray hair stuck out in wisps above his ears. He had an easy laugh that broke down into a smoker’s wheeze that he treated with a pull on his pint.
    “A pint of Guinness costs a quarter back in Boston,” I said, trying to be helpful.
    “A quarter of wot?” Bert’s face scrunched up as he tried to figure out what I meant.
    “Quarter of a dollar. Twenty-five cents. How about I give you a dollar and that should be more than enough for a pint for me and one each for my friends here?” I nodded in the direction of my bar mates.
    “Wot I’ll do with a Yank dollar I don’t know, but all right. I hope the rest of your lot don’t expect the same.”
    Pretty soon we all ended up shaking hands—Bert, the barman; George and Henry at the bar, both deliverymen for the markets at Covent Garden, which is where I had gotten myself to. I ended up trading that dollar for a five-spot, and hearing stories of the Great War, London during the worst of the Blitz, and where their sons were serving. Bert had a kid in Burma with the army, and was worried since he hadn’t gotten a letter in a month. George had two boys, both of whom had signed up with the Royal Navy, one on a destroyer out in the Atlantic and the other a mechanic at Scapa Flow. Henry had a daughter in the WRENs, just like Daphne, and a boy who had been in France with the BEF but made it out at Dunkirk.
    “Lucky we are they’re all in one piece still,” George said, and Bert made himself busy with the glasses.
    “Aye,” said Henry quietly, nodding his head as if in prayer. The war was still young.
    I told them about Boston and entertained them with stories of all the murders I had solved. If I overstated my contribution, well, it was the Guinness talking. Sometime after dark they led me out to Piccadilly Circus, steered me down Piccadilly, and told me to walk straight until I came to Hyde Park.
    “Big bloody green thing, in the daylight anyway, filled with potatoes, it is! Can’t miss it,” George said. “And good luck, lad.”
    We all shook hands, and Henry slapped me on the back like an old pal. It was as if I was standing in for all of their kids, and the act of befriending me would spread out all over the world and bring acts of kindness to their children. I thought about Dad, and realized it was the kind of thing he’d do, too.
    I walked until I came to Hyde Park Corner again. I thought about everything I had seen today and everything I had been taught all my life about the English. I knew two things for sure: first, that Ireland had to be free and united, and second, that Bert, George, and Henry and the woman on the stretcher with her hand raised in a V sign weren’t people I had an argument with.
    I was pretty tired now, the flight, the long day, and the Guinness making the slight slope up Hyde Park feel steeper than it should have. I stuck my hands in my pockets and hunched forward, thinking of bed and sleep. The image that came to me was of my room at home and the bed I had slept in every night of my life, until this war came along. The bed I woke up in every Christmas morning, the “socks” Christmas, and the ones after that with toys, jewelry, and sweets for all.
    One of those years, Dad converted a small room upstairs into his den. It had been full of boxes and junk, but one day he cleaned it out and the next day a leather sofa and chair showed up. Real leather, with brass nail heads showing. He got himself a used rolltop